When leaders fall silent

The committed optimist has an infallible cheerfulness.

Toxic Positivity is an unwanted feature of our workplaces

First published in the Mandarin

You have been here

It was one of those meetings you recognise before entering the room, where consultation is just a performance. The decision is made; your input is for show. The leader beams with positivity, painting a future so rosy that it denies reality. You nod, knowing that if reality slips into the room, it will be dismissed as irrelevant pessimism. You speak about small, safe things, careful not to disrupt the script.

As the meeting ends, your colleagues share whispered truths about the pointlessness of dissent, the pervasive toxic positivity, and the hubris of leadership.

Back at your desk, you wrestle with the discomfort of your silence. You try to justify it—but inside, you know silence is its own betrayal.

The rise of toxic positivity

It is rare for a week to pass without a newspaper or magazine offering insight into the hubris of our political or business leaders, nationally and internationally.

We shouldn’t be surprised.

The cult of celebrity leaders, where personalities propped up by flattery and uncritical praise elevate the heroic brand of business, public service, and political leaders, is pervasive.

The narrative of success is the keystone, but it is often based on small and highly selected samples. In 1982, Peters and Waterman’s In Search of Excellence divined eight characteristics shared by ‘excellent companies’. This was the vanguard for popular books on the organisational characteristics that led to business success.

In 2013, Malcolm Gladwell’s book David and Goliath picked out dyslexia as a ‘desirable difficulty’ based on a handful of successful business people who also have dyslexia. The focus on the personality characteristics of ‘great leaders’ is ancient. Today’s variant is marked by forensic attention on narrow traits or habits (or, in Gladwell’s case, impairment) as predictors of subsequent success.

Finally, somewhere between these two approaches is the attention paid to educational ‘dropouts’ as the defining criteria for entrepreneurial success in technology startups.

These approaches to understanding leadership share two core features: first, they focus on success and ignore entirely the counterbalancing narrative of failure; second, using small and select samples makes it simpler to find shared characteristics that might predict success.

Positive psychology has sensible and empirical roots, but when translated into populist leadership, it has become unfettered optimism. Relentless optimism creates a cult that glamorises positivity, leaving no room for dissent or disagreement.

Post-pandemic, ‘toxic positivity’ has become the label for leadership optimism overdone.

The impact of toxic positivity in the workplace is often described from the employees' perspective. However, the implications for leadership teams are more concerning.

Optimism overdone

To be a leader, one must understand the importance of stability to effective operations while knowing that stability is nonsense. It is one of the many illusions that all leaders perpetuate.

The committed optimist possesses an infallible cheerfulness about the future. Although we tend to see optimism and pessimism as opposites, both are fatalistic.

The optimist responds to everything in the same rigorous pre-programmed way, eliminating chance, contingency, and uncertainty. In this deterministic world, everything will turn out predictably well, no matter what.

Optimism moves from a beneficial mental predisposition to something similar to handedness or eye colour—it just is.

When optimism is the leadership narrative, conformity is King. Opposing an optimistic outlook risks the labels pessimist, critic, and naysayer. After all, leaders should tell positive stories about future success.

Optimism focuses exclusively on success. Consequently, it cannot admit the prospect of failure or even variations on the optimistic outlook.

Optimism silences opposing views and dismisses them with phrases like ‘everything happens for a reason’. It trivialises and suppresses emotion, ‘just stay positive’, and disregards context, making the individual accountable for ‘happiness’.

Optimism can be a toxic leadership characteristic.

When leaders fall silent

Leadership is the translation of thought into language and action. What happens when leaders, facing Disney-style optimism, fall silent?

Patrick Lencioni’s 2010 book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team offers a helpful framework.

• The absence of trust. When optimism dominates leadership, teams avoid discussing challenges or failures. The insistence on positivity creates a climate where vulnerability is seen as weakness, eroding trust within the team.

• Fear of conflict. Optimism emphasises harmony, while positive narratives discourage healthy debate. Dissenting opinions are not expressed for fear of being labelled antagonistic and uncooperative.

• Lack of commitment. Optimism focuses solely on a rosy narrative, masking a lack of clarity about challenges and next steps. Without addressing potential obstacles, leadership teams do not fully commit to decisions, as they don’t trust the vision is grounded in reality.

• Avoiding accountability. The optimistic outlook fosters a culture where accountability is sidelined to maintain the illusion of progress.

• Inattention to results. An optimistic outlook requires constant attention. However, sustaining the narrative prioritises appearances over outcomes. Superficial achievements are celebrated, while deeper concerns that affect long-term results are ignored.

Silence and avoidance harm organisational performance, ethical decision-making, and leader wellbeing.

The leader’s choice

Toxic positivity among leadership teams transforms leadership into a one-sided conversation.

While it’s easy to discuss ‘speaking truth to power,’ putting it into action is more complex. Dissent doesn’t always appear abruptly; instead, we may arrive at it gradually, influenced by various circumstances or a growing sense of duty.

Our struggles often lie not in opposing others directly but in conflicting with their perspectives, interpretations, and thought processes. We find ourselves distanced from the system and our colleagues.

Toxic positivity and relentless optimism offer a binary choice—you’re in, or you’re out.

There is doubt and loneliness in being out of step with others. We have a strong desire to belong that can lead to rationalising those niggling doubts or blaming ourselves for not ‘getting it’.

To lead is to choose.

We choose to overlook the ongoing responsibility to promote diverse ideas and viewpoints.

We choose to disagree or to ‘rub along to get along’.

We choose whether translating leadership into language and action is a monologue or a dialogue.